I can happily say working with Zahava was one of the most profound spiritual journeys I’ve had the good fortune of experiencing in my life.- Diana Ferrante, Women’s Empowerment Leader, Intuitive Advisor

Zahava's work has returned me to the natural state of being my most loving and most beloved self. - Emily Tepper, Receptivity Coach & Craniosacral Therapist

This was exactly what I needed to rebalance myself. I was able to release the week’s stress and gain confidence in being the clear minded and moving bodied me that I want to be. - An overworking teacher

Zahava gave me the nurturing excavation tools to my inner realms that have been yearning to moan, be touched, to be remembered, honored, revered, and celebrated.- Jennifer Maeve

This work not only supported me grounding in my own feminine experience, but it translated into my work as a coach--allowing a new depth of connection with my clients and their own sacred and sexual journeys.- Dana, Certified Life Coach

Thank you for holding and creating such beautiful space for my own feminine to unfold and reveal herself to me through my body.- Elizabeth Joy Mueller, Business Coach & Intuitive Guide

So grateful to be featured as a guest writer for the Body is Not an Apology, fostering radical unapologetic self love and transforming the politics of invisibility. Check out my post here! Thank you Sonya Renee Taylor for being a visionary in this movement and inviting my voice!

My pelvis has been on a journey. I asked her to externally rotate and lift for the better part of 20 years while I was immersed in ballet. I didn’t know the energetic repercussions of these actions. But I did know that I cultivated way more sexual energy than my personality was comfortable expressing at the time. I also started having tendonitis in my feet.

Now I have no injuries, which is rare for someone who’s been dancing 30 years. I now understand the connection of the feet and the pelvis. I also have learned that the pelvis is a tremendous gateway to intuition and heart opening, not to mention the next generation. I’ve worked with many sexual abuse survivors, pregnant women, midwives, sexuality educators, and I have witnessed the ability of the pelvis to alchemize wounds into ecstasy, pain into forgiveness, tension into trust.

This weekend I’m so excited to bring this work to the Theatrical Bellydance Conference! We will be looking at the physical and energetic anatomy of the pelvis. I am starting to call this the “psychic hokey pokey.” Energy follows our intention!

I love sharing how the intricate muscles of the pelvis support our vital organs and weave with the same complexity as our facial muscles. I’ve heard too often that “kegels” are about stopping the flow of urine. But that would be akin to saying that facial expressions are like squeezing everything into a tight pucker and then releasing… and missing the nuances of happy, stunned, surprised… We can move our tailbone, we can isolate the right and left halves of the pelvic diamond floor, we can lift and tilt our womb. These deep gestures of the regenerative organs flood us with sensation, and sensation brings us into presence.

Our time together at the conference will be brief, as there are many incredible presenters sharing the day. So I will be offering a longer workshop in the next coming weeks. I’ve created this blog to gather your questions and comments so I can address them in the next workshop.

Slowing down… the soul has a different timing. I cannot direct it by the list of events in my calendar. But the more I Ground, I can listen to what is ripe and ready in my soul.

The first retreat in my Sacred Woman Alchemy 6 Month Program was dedicated to a full day of Grounding. I am inspired to share some of it with you here as I witness the impact it has made in our group. Look out NYC, we are about to engage with the Earth on a whole new level!

I am noticing that many of the clients coming to me right now are deeply passionate, high energy, highly intuitive, and that Grounding is important for them to have ease in their physcial, sexual, and financial life. Grounding supports a consistency in their priorities that brings ideas into real actions. Faith is inspiring, but grounded faith is inspiring and accountable.

I remember that several years into my “shamanic” and energy trainings I started studying bioenergetics with Teeni Dakini. She pointed out how many trainings explore the advanced energy skills without first mastering basic grounding. My life has not been the same since. Thank you, Teeni!

Grounding is a state that becomes easier to access the more we practice. In fact, it’s worth noting that some things like drugs, alcohol, compulsive sex can feel enjoyable and the more we engage them, the more we want more of them. Now with Grounding, it may take a while to really drop in when we start. But once we learn this new state, it takes less and less to access this rejuvenating state. You know the feeling when you are running around the city in rush hour and you feel hungry, you have to pee, and then you finally get to your doorstep, and you are HOME. Imagine if we could feel at home in our body at any time. This is Grounding.

Nobody can tell you what it feels like to be Grounded. Each of us has a unique felt sense of Grounding, and it can change from time to time. Often when my clients experience Grounding for the first time they have a lot of uncomfortable sensations that their body has been waiting to communicate with them. I consider Grounding energetic hygiene. Think what you might discover if you clean your room for the first time in a few years.

While it can seem safer to tune out and disassociate, especially in response to trauma, we are actually the most safe when we are present in the sensations of our body here now.

Grounding is the foundation for cultivating attention and intention. In this information age, especially for those of us living in an urban setting, it is revolutionary. The things we can collectively envision and transform will be completely different in a Grounded society. The trauma’s we can release from our bodies, and the pleasure we can be present for in our lives will be on a whole new level. I have been hearing that we collectively are becoming more intuitive. If this is true, we need the skills to integrate in our physical being, relationships, and actions this new “download” of energy and information.

Our relationship to the Earth will become an embodied experience, rather than a strategy we sometimes think about when a “natural disaster” hits.

This is the subtle revolution.

Image by Irene Dowd from Taking Root to Fly

As the founder of Love Making Dances, I am interested in how we need to stand on the Earth together to evolve the legacy of love and sexuality. I am struck by the recent statistics demonstrating a rise in c-sections and breech babies resulting from the computer posture our mama’s have today. This trend in major surgery upon the birthing of the next generation has stemmed from the narrowing of our pelvic cavity as a culture, tucking our tales under in seats at a desk. Fetuses are actually flipping so they have room higher in the torso which leads to a more challenging birthing process. Imagine that when we ground, when we broaden the basin of our pelvis and allow our energy to descend all the way down our legs… not only can babies have space inside us, WE can have space inside us.

Now that was the big picture. I’m going to drop down into a very concrete voice as we venture deep into the soles of our feet.

How can we tell when we are not grounded?

Often we will feel headaches, spacy, tranced out, disoriented in our life. This can feel enjoyable temporarily but then it’s difficult to transition to the next activity after a peak experience. We can also feel a sense of energetic collapse after ungrounded ecstasy. I’ve noticed that without Grounding we can lose a sense of a container and this feeds consumerism and materialism because we lose the felt sense of having and being full.

In the Grounding Training

In the Grounding training we work with the 26 bones of each foot. We venture deep into the architecture of our bones, our breath, and our dynamic relating with gravity. We release tension in the physical body, unclumping and refining our experience of each muscle. We feel and surrender the muscles so they can be supported by the bones. We learn the muscles that habitually come to the rescue to hold us up and redirect that extra energy as they learn to release and trust. Grounding changes the neuromuscular system and the energetic body to be more efficient and supported. It taught me that I had been confusing adrenaline for life force energy.

I feel inspired to share this quote from Anodea Judith whom I have had the pleasure of studying with:

“Many people who cannot find their true path in life have simply not yet found their ground. Sometimes they are busy looking up instead of down, where the feet meet the path…”

To learn about upcoming trainings, online courses, and teleconferences on Grounding and Energy Skills visit www.LoveMakingDances.com. A powerful way to Ground is Esalen Massage, to learn more about this art or schedule a session click here.

I recently attended a day long conference with the most inspiring creative entrepreneurs. This “Mastermind” event was hosted by Move the Crowd, an entrepreneurial training company dedicated to helping the next generation “stay true, get paid, and do good.”

Now let me tell you that most of the folks in this room are like me, artists, healers, social visionaries, activists… This is not your regular business training crowd. AND let me also say that the presenters and facilitators have been selected because they speak their truth and they are undeniably living in alignment with their soul gifts. To say that my relationship to money has transformed since joining this community, would be an understatement. My relationship to… who I am, my awareness of my soul gifts, and my refinement of how I want to create an impact on the world around me… have transformed.

What moves me the most about this community is the genuine curiosity about who each other are. Now I’ve been teaching naked yoga classes for years. And the level of trust and vulnerability in this room is a whole other level of naked. This is when we show up and share what we dare to care so deeply about, the essence of why we are here. As Barbara Stanny posed the question, “What would give me the greatest pleasure to be remember for?” This is not just a financial revolution happening amongst my peers, this is our new spiritual practice, Barbara says. The room was listening from our core, we knew that the legacy opportunities before us were about to be taken to the next level. My God how we listened. We became so beautiful as we shared our ventures, our challenges, our goals, our feedback and creative suggestions. I felt like a kid in the candy store and we are the candy.

I want to say something about Love. I am more clear than ever that Love moves people and touches people through me. This is why I am here. I am restoring the lineage of dance as a ritual for transformation and community health. I am restoring the lineage of sex as the intersection of body and spirit — that set up this agreement for us to be here — and that can be resourced to deepen our purpose and our passion for it. This is the root of my offerings through LOVE MAKING DANCES.

I have been reflecting on my communities of performing artists and sexuality educators. I am contemplating the 3 stages of financial development that Barbara mentioned:

Survival

Stability

Affluence

I’m realizing that these stages are not just about individuals. These stages can also be applied to my communities. I would say that often we have been relating to each other from the Surivival paradigm. I’m visioning deeply what we can offer when we are living with affluence. I’m visioning the performances we will create and the presence we will have with our clients. I am visioning the commitment we will have to each others’ success, the time we will invest in getting to truly know each other, and the creativity that will abound in our curriculum.

It’s time.

Thank you Rha Goddess for creating Move the Crowd. Thank you for showing me a template for community with deep inner resources and such love.

I’m noticing that the women in my Sacred Woman Alchemy program are shifting. What started as a personal journey about self care has evolved into a converesation about how we want to share and direct this life force energy we are cultivating. I trust this process so deeply.

I am seeing 3 parallel stages:

Survival in the body

Safety in the body

Body as an instrument of life force and creative expression

As we release the impact of trauma on the nervous system and learn how to direct our energy, we are naturally stepping into a generous inquiry about what we are here to contribute.

There is warmth in my body. My muscles feel supple. My feet are relaxed and held by the tremendous Earth. I feel a profound innocence in our circle as we stand here with closed eyes. We’ve been dancing the past 50 minutes and here in the silence between songs we are seemingly still. Our breath is deep and in harmony with the rhythms we have just been hearing. The taste in my mouth has become sweet. My mind is clear and gentle with me. My intuition is tuned to high and the things in my life that I desire to serve are present and simple… touch and move people to experience love and awe.

The music starts, Miriam Makeba sings with us through the speakers. We sway our hips side to side and drop our heels down into the Earth. We are harvesting from the land. We could be transported from the inncense and latern lights in this manhattan Solstice Studio to the sunny artichoke fields of California, or the sandy gardens in Dakar, Senegal where I danced years ago. This is the universal body bowing to the Earth and harvesting that which nourishes us. I am not really “teaching” these steps. I am remembering from one culture to the next, and pointing out the instincts we embody. We know ourselves more deeply when we dance our dances. Planting, harvesting, coming of age, courting, mating, birting, healing, dying… Love, makes all these dances for us.

I open the circle to ask the dancers why they have come. A man speaks about watching the children dance at a party. As he speaks he starts dancing, his excitement cannot be hidden. “I want to be free like the child,” he says.

I look around the circle. We are big kids here tonight with such laughter in our eyes.

Everything seems possible in this vibrant space. The fatigue has dissolved. It feels like a first date with God/Goddess. I am giddy. I can’t wait to be touched and yet I am, every part of my body is touched by Life.

If you would like to join us Mondays in March at Solstice Studio, 8:30 – 9:45 pm, you can sign up here! Drop ins are welcome.

Oh! I’m soooo thrilled to offer a 6 month training for women. It will be starting in February and it will ripen us with the warming of the seasons. This will include biweekly private coaching sessions and six monthly group rituals. We will be learning the psychic anatomy of a woman, the alchemy of sexual energy, shamanic energy skills…

I am visioning it now and I’ve been so moved by hearing the things YOU want to learn. Some of what I’m hearing from you is here. I’ve created this post explicitly for the purpose of gathering your wishes. Please comment here what you would like!

movement that helps feeling safe and happy in the body

movement that leads to openess, agility, mobility and fluidity

movement that energizes, uplifts

movement that makes me feel alive vibrant and ecstatic

movement that is s delicious that i can’t help doing it every day !

movement that gets me in touch with my beauty and power and radiance

movement that makes me take the full space that is mine

movement that makes me express all that i am without fear or passive range !

movement that makes me naturally align with the innate wisdom and intelligence of my own body !

movement that doesn’t feel like exercise but instead organic language of my being!

“Hello. Just say hello to the new being,” Roy Capellaro reminds us of the the simplicity of greeting a new soul in his workshop on Neonatal Craniosacral Intervention for Midwives.

The room was usually still. I don’t mean the bodies standing in a circle with their hands on the heads of their sisters. I mean the quality of listening we were bringing to the circle had a rare caliber. This was a circle of women who were living their calling. Their souls were more at peace in their bodies than many circles of women I have had the honor of teaching. Passionate, funny, oh so loving, and really grounded… I LOVE teaching birthing dances to the midwives at the New York State Association of Licensed Midwives annual conference.

This is my second year coming to guide the circle at the sacred Powell House, a Quaker Retreat Center with a labyrinth, a neighboring farm for rescued animals, Dreaming Tree Farm and Full Belly Farm. We gather in a circle on the Earth to join in the lineage of women dancing the loving sensual and communal artistry of belly dance.

We sing through our mouths and the mouths of our hip sockets. In one moment our bodies come to stillness together with one hand on the heart and one on the womb, the two energy centers of womanly love. “Imagine that you are in your heart looking down into the basin of your pelvis,” I say. In this exact moment we hear, “Wow, it’s huge in here. It’s like a mansion!” I realize that the two women making their way to join our circle have become the voice of our hearts.Dancing is the art of embodying our soul, listening to our deepest instincts while feeling the space, time, and presence of those around us and embodying the relationship between the inner and outer worlds. I found a profound similarity between how Roy instructed us to listen to the new soul and the state of receptivity we enter when we dance.

Artwork from the NYSLAM Conference

To my delight one of the midwives hosted me at her home, the Quaker Intentional Village in Canaan. Here I met 4 day old lambs and had a 5 year old lead me to the “magical mystical waterfall!” I had the satisfying opportunity to discover some mutual visions for the future of humanity with Eric Harris-Braun, co-founder of the Meta Currency Project creating the next economy to facilitate healthy flows of resources and information that support people, society and the Earth. I trust those of us who are deeply devoted to the new paradigm will continue to find each other. The Art of Being Here When a New Soul Arrives took on a new context as we are arriving at a new consciousness for humanity. The Here we are co-creating is becoming more and more regenerative as we midwife our own birthing of consciousness. Hello. Welcome, this is our new life together.

A dear friend of mine and phenomenal musician pointed out that yoga was originally created by man for men. He and I shared a powerful connection through our dancing and music and he wanted to know what a Tantrika like me was doing teaching a yoga class for women. Appreciating the profound exchange of Shakti and Shiva energy between us, and his extensive spiritual background I was grateful for his question. Months later as I offer Yoga for the Sexual Priestess I am realizing how this yoga is unique and distinctly different from many yoga practices.

I notice that many yoga classes today are consciously or unconsciously creating a “masculine” version of the body mind spirit connection. Some of this can be observed through a focus on fitness, the athletic aesthetic of yoga clothing, the linear forms of many poses, repetition of linear asana sequences, language emphasizing the muscular skeletal system, under-engaging the students creativity, the grid-like spatial structure of class on individual mats. In addition to this I have also observed that many women yoga teachers are hungry to access their second chakras when they come to my workshops and often have some unlearning to move through to find pleasure. Coming from a rigorous professional dance background I can appreciate the balance of discipline and pleasure in a consciously attended to body, mind, soul.

The archetype of the Sexual Priestess embodies a Oneness with sex and spirit that brings us into a co-creation with the Great Everything. Her presence is reemerging because our collective life force is ready to become fertile and whole. Through the Sexual Priestess we are maturing from a mother child relationship with the Earth to a lover relationship with the Earth where we have a greater responsibility as we co-create life.

What is YOGA FOR THE SEXUAL PRIESTESS?

Sexual energy is a creative energy. Yoga for the Sexual Priestess engages the following of our body’s instincts as a Creator. This deepens our awareness of how we are feeling.

Cultivating life energy is an erotic and spiritual experience, the full expression of the sacred body and sensual spirit is welcomed through breath and sound as One with the Great Everything.

The language guiding this practice spans systems in our body including the skeletal, soul, organ, sexual, chakra, muscular, collective and ancestral anatomies expanding our personal practice into a whole context. We enter different states of mind by focusing on specific systems, the language of Yoga for the Sexual Priestess intentionally weaves sex and spirit in the ancestral web for the evolution of trust, love, and passion.

Rocking, undulating, and vibration are qualities of movement not usually found in a yoga class. They deeply access our life force energy and naturally occur during embodied transformations including orgasm, deep grieving, and soul shaking laughter. We use them to invoke transformation.

We visit the animal spirit of the poses to remember our resilient and sensual animal instincts.

Divine Costumes. That was the name of my first naked solo dancing onstage. I was in college. My parents, grandparents, cousins, aunt and uncle were in the audience. I had credited Mom and Dad as the costume designers.

Photo by Jennifer Maeve

I remember the stage manager asking if I wanted to put clothes on for the bow. I remember thinking he missed my intention… to honor the body. I remember how moved I was that night to hear people’s responses. My female housemate came up after the show and said my dance made her feel like a Goddess that night. I remember my male housemate saying he wanted to sexualize it, but he couldn’t, it was so much more. I remember grandma’s cousin sat behind some young children and she thought they would laugh. But when I started dancing they were silent and mesmerized.

I remember the email grandma’s cousin sent me 10 years later, “Beautiful Cousin, twice removed, you are out of this world! You have created a field of exploration that is all of you. I am sorry to be such an old lady, about to be 80, or I would be participating in all your events.”

I remember the dancer who was going to perform the duet with me before she developed a back injury. I remember her surprise that I encouraged her to rest and take care of her body. Our professional training had taught us to be martyrs more than sacred bodies. I remember the moment I chose to do the show anyway and to improvise a solo based on the duet we had started to create.

I remember rehearsing in the dance studio naked and covering the windows with pink foam boards. I remember my friend who sat filming me, baring her breasts in solidarity. I remember the security guard who walked in and asked us what we were doing. I remember thinking he felt more like an insecurity guard. I remember the badge I made the next day as I experimented with being a soul security guard.

Painted by Rainbow for the Sacred Sex Round Up

I remember the awkward moment of disrobing in the “dressing room” while everyone else put clothes on. I remember feeling the most comfortable on stage. I could get away with things in the spotlight that caused discomfort off stage. Maybe it was because the performance gave people permission to look… there’s some magic about performance that gives us permission to show and to see more intimately. Or maybe people like to look out from the dark.

I remember performing naked again years later at the Sacred Sex Round Up with my friends, a djembe player and an opera singer. I remember a couple came up to me after the solo crying. They said it was the first time they could share the experience of being turned on while watching a naked woman perform. They said they felt I let them see all of me. I remember the woman of the couple chosing to transform that night. She began to study with my sexual shaman teacher.

Earth held, the sky has never explained infinity so clearly.

I remember hiking naked in the red rocks of Sedona with my soul sister and best friend from kindergarden. I remember laying with our legs open, sunning our yonis. I remember how delicious the fire of the sun felt on my clit. I remember thinking, “how have I never spread my legs to the sun before?” And then thinking, where else could I? I remember the couple who came along the trail and the split second of wondering if we should move. I remember the man tripped as he came upon us. I remember inviting him into our comfort rather than joining him in his awkwardness. I remember as he passed the blessing I called out to him, and really to myself, “enjoy your life!”

At New Years I lost a dear inspiring friend, Kibibi Dillion. Her spirit told me to stop fucking around and do what I’m here to do: perform, teach, coach. MAKE A ONE WOMAN SHOW.

I’ve fantasized about doing this for years. Every time I saw a performer create a one person show it felt like a coming of age ritual and I sensed it was a matter of time before it would be my turn.

What stories will I tell? What dances….songs? Ok. I wasn’t expecting that. This piece is growing me.

I decided at New Years that I wanted to perform my show in Kentucky and New York, the two birth places of my parents. I took out a calendar and highlighted labor day weekend, this is when I want to perform I told myself. A few months later I was at a party and a man asked me, “aren’t you Zahava from Appalachia?” He recognized me from a performance I had attended a year prior in the Bronx. Yes.

Now Appalachia for me has been a deep secret. My roots there seem to be the core of my sense of not belonging to the world I see and feel around me. He turned out to be the director of the Clear Creek Festival, an incredible annual festival for healing, performance, and cultural transformation. After a beautiful conversation that brought me to tears he invited me to come perform. He said he would email me the dates.

When I returned home I opened the email to discover that the festival was on…Labor Day weekend! Oh, universe I think I asked for this. But I was so terrified that I didn’t respond for months. In the past few weeks I have met 3 people who had been to the festival or were from Appalachia. Suddenly the reality of Appalachia was showing up in my NYC life. As much as I feared going back HOME it seemed the greatest fear would be to say no to this invitation I had requested.

I sat in the park with my soul sister, Chelsea, who is also Appalachian and Jewish and had performed at Clear Creek in 2010. She said to me, “you’re going to feel at home.” At which point I lost it. I cried so deeply — What if I don’t like it? She looked at me, “you and I are the kinds of people who go everywhere, we have such an expansive experience visiting other people’s cultures and realities. Sometimes the scariest thing is to go home.”

I called the director this week. I want to come, is it too late? I borrowed a tent, I cleared my schedule…it’s official universe, I accept.

Making a one woman show has been a journey. At first I was just trying to find language for my memories and what I felt was important. Then I started doing showings for my dear friends, lovers, tribe. Yes, they sometimes gave feedback but I really was at the stage of needing to be witnessed and seen in my story. Reading your life story aloud every Sunday is an interesting ritual. Some weeks it’s really emotional, and some weeks it feels less so. Just this past week I felt a shift. I am really ready to hear how its occurring for others.

What I’m learning is that a one woman show cannot be made by one woman. I need my community and friends to tell me what it looks like from out there. There is an intimacy in asking for feedback and really receiving it. There are parts of this show that I edited out this week because I realize they were for me. There’s something generous about knowing what not to share. And generous about this stage of the process, because this show is for you. Just like living is for ourselves, AND for each other. Performance is the HOW we live for each other.

And! I don’t have a venue for NYC yet. Universe? If you want to produce my show, sponsor it, have recommendations for festivals, venues, performance opportunities to apply to, please email: Zahava@LoveMakingDances.com.

Sex, Earth, Ancestors

A multimedia solo performance ritual created and performed by Zahava Griss.

My roots bridge religious, cultural, and class lines gifting me with the ability to be and to communicate Love across socially defined realities. I am the child of a New York Jewish sociologist and the Appalachian mountain woman he was assigned to “study.” I was raised by the ballet community and the African diasporic dance community. I learned how differently cultures define dance, the body, sex, the soul, and our relationship with the Earth. This performance ritual is about their evolution and how
our personal life story plays a part in it.

The moment after each of these, we often feel a deep release and peace. They are all forms of vibration…holding on, letting go, holding on, letting go until we really let go. They are all bridges into the involuntary nervous system.

In Orgasm the physical body literally has a spasm through the musculature of the pelvic floor and the womb flutters. In deep grieving and belly laughter the diaphragm contracts and releases with rapid energy and breath. In muscle spasm the muscle contracts and releases and contracts until it surrenders and lengthens. We surrender to the trembling and our voluntary nervous system stops controling the process.

We can have a consciousnessgasm too! Just before our awareness expands we can feel disorientation. My whole life I thought it was hard to make money, wait I can make money? no it’s hard, no wait there are lots of successful passionate people….and then our reality surrenders and the beliefs expand.

What I’ve noticed in the last decade of supporting people through physical and spiritual transformation is that before the transformation there is a vibration. It may not feel good, transformation as much as we seek it does not always “feel” good while it’s happening. But then afterwards there is an expansion!

In the last six months I went to study with Peter Levine, international trauma healing expert and creator of “somatic experiencing.” I also trained with a group of dance therapists on healthy embodiment for trauma survivors. In both of these professional development settings the theme of vibration, trembling, shaking emerged.

Animals do not retain trauma in their systems. Ok, imagine we’re field mice and we gather for dinner. I’m not going to be sitting there petrified telling you, “wow, I almost died 3 times today there was a huge hawk overhead and he came swooping down and I think I’m never going out to the field again!” No, animals tremble and shake until the fear moves through their nervous system and they continue living. Somewhere in our great human evolution we interrupted this process.

So while I was at these trainings with trauma specialists I kept asking why don’t we shake each day and rinse out our nervous system?! Do we have to wait for a trauma? And they were intrigued. Now, this is not new in other cultures where drumming and shaking is a daily practice.

As a yoga teacher and dancer I’ve noticed that a lot of folks try stretching but they are still tight. Sometimes deep stretches actually make them more tight. Recently I saw a rolfer and she was surprised to hear that I’ve been dancing intensely for 30 years and have no injuries. I mean dancing 2-8, sometimes 12 hours a day, and no injuries. She let me know that most dancers and yogis she works on have a lot of chronic injuries and I started to wonder what my body learned and how I can share it with others.

Shaking! Every day I put on music and I shake and let it rattle my breath and recreate my body on a cellular level. Really deep shaking so that sounds come from my throat, the world around me becomes blurry, every part of my body is in motion. Then I localize the vibration and literally shimmey down my legs inside of the hamstring stretchs, IT stretches, inner thigh stretches…I tremble. I remember when I worked with Anodea Judith, a pioneer in chakra health, that energy can move more deeply through a vibrating leg than one with contracted muscles. Later when dancing with Egyptian Priestess, Leslie Zehr, the same theme came up.

So I have started to teach vibration inside of yoga poses. I’m reframing the goal, it’s not so focused on physical flexibility as much as charging the energy through a muscle and oxygenating the tissue. The muscle contracts, releases, contracts….and then transforms. In fact sometimes a really limber body has the hardest time finding this shaking. But the shaking actually repairs, heals, and strengthens our embodiment. It prepares us for what Peter Levine describes as trauma proofing. I would say it integrates the soul body into the physical body so we can live at ease and playfully in a present body.

I’m thrilled to be sharing this approach in my classes and private sessions. I’d love to hear about your experiences with this process too! What are you noticing in your bodies, with your clients, and students?

On Sept 6, 2012, I had the honor dancing Swing Us Sky Rain(bow) at the American Dance Guild Performance Festival. The piece was choreographed by Shani Collins-Achille and focused on breaking the generational cycle of domestic abuse.

Shani facilitates women’s circles for empowerment and this was the perfect intersection of the healing and performing we are here to create. When the lights come up I am the only one laying on the ground, representing those women who have fallen. My 5 sisters are walking softly around me dropping rose petals with compassion and starting the first moves of a dance that will ignite all of us into our fierceness.

During tech week I had the honor of facilitating our cast to get more connected to the work and to each other. The piece centered on Ursula Rucker’s poem, The Return of Innocence Lost (see below.) The dancers were so strong, so embodied, so passionate during this sound scape.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWlY-W6X_w8&w=320&h=266]

As we sat in circle preparing to share this work at the Alvin Ailey Theatre I shared this dedication:

For the women who have only known this

For the women who used to know this

For those of us healing our ancestries through the revolution of self love,